The latest study from the LymeDisease.org patient registry has found significant differences in the course of Lyme disease between men and women.
Analysing data from 2,170 participants in MyLymeData, the researchers found that women experienced longer delays in diagnosis, suffered from more severe symptoms and experienced greater functional impairment than men. These findings were recently published in the *International Journal of General Medicine* in a paper entitled ‘Does Biological Sex Matter in Lyme Disease? The Need for Sex-Disaggregated Data in Persistent Illness’.
Key findings
Women had a higher rate of co-infections, experienced longer diagnostic delays, consulted more doctors before receiving a diagnosis, and were diagnosed at a later stage of the disease than male patients. Women were also more likely to receive a misdiagnosis, and were also more likely to be misdiagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia or a psychiatric disorder, or any combination of these conditions.
Women’s symptoms were more severe, and they were more likely than men to report that Lyme disease had left them incapacitated, confined to bed for several days, and in need of special equipment. Self-reported health status deteriorated equally in both men and women.
There was no statistically significant difference between men and women in terms of response to treatment or the side effects of antibiotic treatment; the majority of both men and women reported that their symptoms had improved since the start of antibiotic treatment.
What conclusions can we draw from this?
If it takes longer for someone to be diagnosed and start treatment, it stands to reason that they may become more unwell than someone who began the recovery process sooner. Furthermore, it has been shown that a delayed diagnosis increases the risk of developing chronic Lyme disease.
This raises the question: why does it take much longer for women to be diagnosed? Perhaps because doctors are often less inclined to believe women’s complaints about their health? According to an article in The New York Times: Women are also more likely to be told that their pain is ‘psychosomatic’, that is, influenced by emotional disturbances. In a survey of more than 2,400 women suffering from chronic pain, 83 per cent said they felt they had experienced gender discrimination from healthcare providers.
Another issue concerns hormonal differences between women and men. The authors of the MyLymeData article point out that, as is known in the case of other diseases, the biological response to infection differs between men and women. According to their theory: “Women with Lyme disease may produce more inflammatory and inhibitory cytokines than men, which may also increase the risk of chronic Lyme disease.” This is a topic that warrants further investigation.
Previous studies on patients with Lyme disease have not sought to separate data for men and women. By disregarding gender-based differences, important lines of inquiry have remained unexplored. LymeDisease.org launched MyLymeData in 2015 to track the real-life experiences of people living with Lyme disease. One of its aims was to help steer researchers towards promising avenues of research. This study does precisely that.
As the authors state: “Future research should focus on the extent to which biological factors contribute to the higher prevalence of chronic Lyme disease in women.” Research into women must address these biological factors.
Source: Lymedisease.org
(C) Lyme Borreliosis Foundation
